


The World All Around

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
Genre: Community: come_shots, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:46:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6154183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Friday night, and Max is putting his wolf suit on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World All Around

**Author's Note:**

> Written for come_shots, "A night on the town"

It's Friday night, and Max is putting his wolf suit on: jeans laundered soft as cotton that ride low on his hips, a faded tee a size too small, scuffed boots to go with half a day's crop of stubble on his cheeks. His dark hair he ruffles to spikes, and he grins at himself in the mirror, sidelong, the way a wolf should. _Up to mischief again,_ his mother would say, but he hasn't seen her much since he left for college, doubts she'd have this sort of mischief in mind. 

Whatever he finds tonight, he's going to eat it up. 

There's a whole slew of clubs not far from his apartment, but he steers clear of the pub he likes when he's got his Max suit on, slips back out of a bar when he recognizes the booth in the corner as people he knows from his Psych class. They don't see him, he doesn't think, and if maybe he does hear his name as he's heading out the door, if he doesn't look back, it isn't real. There's better places to be where no one knows him, where he can be...something else. Some _one_ else. 

Someone who can dance without caring what he looks like, with anyone who comes close enough to be pulled into his orbit. He doesn't know the band playing, can't remember the name from the marquee over the door, but the whole place is up and moving, and for a moment he thinks it isn't the heavy kick of the drums that shake the walls but the _people,_ the wild flex and strut and sway of them, all of them moving in time. 

There's a shift in the bodies around him, and suddenly he's looking up a few inches into pale eyes--yellow, he thinks, which is weird, because the nearest goth club's a few blocks down--a sidelong smile like his own in the mirror. The guy's his age, maybe a little older, with an untamed mess of black hair and an apparent fondness for orange and gold, a knack for carrying off clothes that don't seem to really fit him. They maybe aren't meant to fit anybody, as ragged as they are. But he's hot, smiles with _all_ his teeth, and Max likes that, likes it enough to steer them to the edges of the crowd and get pushed against a wall, feeling the bass line buzzing through his spine as two big hands cage his hips and a mouth comes down on his own. 

The guy tastes like nothing he can put a name to, smells like woodsmoke and wet leaves from this close, and Max moans into the kiss, already hard. Conversation's impossible over the band and the crowd, but a roll of his hips and a pointed look at the door is easily translated. When Max leaves, the guy follows, looming quiet but solid behind him. 

Out under the streetlights, it's easier to tell: his eyes really are yellow, but Max doesn't ask why the contacts. He's going to pretend they're the real thing. 

They don't talk on their way back to his apartment, so the silence isn't as weird as it could be when he lets them both in and the guy gets his first look at the place. Girls tend to gush over all the plants, a veritable forest overgrowing their pots, but guys mostly just ask what he's growing under his bed, what his major is, look at him funny when he says, "Art" and not "Botany." 

The guy at his back sort of...hums, almost a purr, like he likes what he sees. The hands are back, warm palms sliding around to stroke down his stomach, lingering at his belt as a mouth finds his ear. "Can we get you out of these things?" the guy asks, voice deeper than Max expects, with a rich, growling undertone that's probably just from the stiff length pressed against his ass. 

"Yeah," he says, leaning back a little, and doesn't feel the guy shift at all to take his weight. Strong, stronger than he looks. Max likes that too. "Come on." 

He starts to take a step forward, but the hands splayed across his stomach don't budge. "You're sure?" 

It's such a weird thing to ask. Why else would he have brought the guy home? But there's something uncertain in that deep voice, gruff and friendly and kind, and Max feels his throat close in sudden, aching nostalgia. 

"Yeah," he says again. "It's cool." 

His collection of plants is even denser in the bedroom, ivy and creepers and the green fireworks-tufts of spider plants everywhere. Sometimes when he wakes up in the middle of the night, the shadows of his miniature jungle are convincing enough he can almost tell himself he'd back in that forest again, the one he used to visit when he was a kid. _Imaginary,_ the doctors used to tell him, kept on telling him until he believed it. The therapist his mother arranged for him has never seen the inside of his apartment and never fucking will. 

The interrogation he braces himself for never comes. Instead there's just another purring hum, surprised and pleased, and a face nuzzling at the side of his neck like an affectionate cat. He's pretty sure he's imagining the way the guy seems to stoop towards him, suddenly taller than Max remembers, but-- 

"Missed us," the guy growls against his throat with the contented, rumbling sigh of a bear or a lion. Something big. "You did miss us, didn't you?" 

Max doesn't look down, but he can feel the prick of what feel like claws through the thin cotton of his shirt. He thinks he should have taken his pills today. He knows he doesn't care. 

"Yeah. Of course I did. I'm...." 

"You're our king," the Wild Thing says, and Max stiffens with a jerk of surprise. That... _no one_ knows that, no one but the Wild Things, and he drops his head, sees thick, muscular arms covered in stripy orange-and-gold fur, hands like paws tipped in talons as long as his palm. He's seen things before, but not like this, not in years. After so long, surely he's forgotten _how._

And he turns. 

Slowly. 

And looks up. 

The wicked-sharp horns are the same, and the thick mane of black hair, the lustrous, silvery scales of the Wild Thing's lower half. He's just the way Max remembers, but he's not sure Wild Things _can_ age, they're such a hodgepodge mix of every myth ever invented, the immortal and the monstrous interbred until the one becomes indistinguishable from the other. Gryphon, dragon, minotaur, satyr; he hadn't had names for the mismatched pieces of them until years after they were gone. Or after he lost the trick of getting back. 

But he remembers this one, his general and right-hand man, the one who'd bowed to him first and was always just _there_ ever afterwards. Laughing at his jokes and joining in his pranks, curling safe and solid around him at night. There'd been no heat in the Wild Thing's growl back then, but Max can hear it now, doesn't want to unhear it. 

"That's right," he says, tipping his chin up and holding yellow eyes until they drop, a shudder wracking the big frame before him. "I'm your king. And don't you forget it." 

He gets a purring laugh for that, paws reaching for him again, and there isn't time to worry about the claws before they're ripping his shirt to shreds. It sounds very loud in the quiet of his apartment, though his apartment isn't precisely quiet anymore. He thinks he can hear the soft, sleepy drone of night insects, the faint sigh of a breeze through the leaves of his plants. 

He sits down to take off his own shoes, bats paws and claws away to take care of his belt and laughs himself when his jeans and boxers are all but torn off him. Sharp as they are, those talons don't even nick him in passing, but he gets a weird, fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach when he pushes himself back, further up on the bed, and the Wild Thing slinks up on all fours, stalking him. Max reminds himself who's king here, makes himself listen to the contented purr as his old friend rubs a furred cheek against his knee, nuzzles along his thigh and looks up just when it's getting good, yellow eyes asking a question. 

Max grins, reaches out and grabs a horn, pulling him closer. "Come on," he says, "I want to. Don't you?" 

"Mm," he hears, and then his eyes are rolling shut, a huge, wet tongue lapping at him with clumsy enthusiasm. That mouth isn't really built for _talking,_ much less for this, and it's weird but it's good, because it's...because it's _his._ Because he hasn't been forgotten, and since he couldn't find his way back himself, they came to find him instead. 

Burying both his hands in the coarse black strands of the Wild Thing's mane, he lets his knees fall open wider, jerking and groaning. It's almost a tease, never quite enough pressure for long enough for him to make it to the edge. He reaches down at last when he can't stand it anymore, wraps his fist around his cock and feels that soft tongue drag over his knuckles, and that's it, one touch and he's gone. 

The purr becomes a growl as the Wild Thing licks his chest and stomach clean, wraps that oversized tongue around the head of his cock and between his loosening fingers. Crouching above him, his old friend is huge and heavy and solid, maybe the realest thing Max has ever seen, and he doesn't know what he's going to do when he wakes up in the morning to his potted plants and an empty bed. 

But the walls of his room seem curiously far away for now, out there somewhere behind the trunks of the trees that ring them in, beyond the distant ocean lit by the moon he can see shining down from a break in the woven branches above. 

The Wild Thing slinks closer, blanketing him with warm, musky fur and whimpering high and soft as an erection he's pretty sure he's going to have to see to believe rubs across his thigh. Broad hips twitch, but that's all; the Wild Thing is waiting, content to pin him down for now, nuzzling again at his hair. Warm breath at his ear makes him shiver, but he stills at the soft words that follow. 

"Don't go," the Wild Thing says. "Oh, please don't go." 

_We'll eat you up,_ he remembers them promising time and time again, _we love you so._

"I don't know if I _can_ stay," he admits, hands stroking restlessly over bulky shoulders, petting gleaming, brushfire fur. 

The Wild Thing says nothing, seems suddenly small for all its vast size. 

For a moment the world flickers, the moon above dimming like a candle about to gutter out. 

But as the breeze tears through the clearing with sudden gusto, carrying a far-off roar he thinks he recognizes, Max digs his fingers into scratchy fur and holds on tight, says, "I'll try."


End file.
